Op's example is a textbook example of what happened to me. I used to have a lot of RSS feeds in Google Reader, when it closed I never moved anywhere else because at the time there wasn't an obvious alternative.
Why not just an RSS aggregator program / app? Like those which preceded and continued after Google Reader. They're no more difficult to use, you just add feeds and the program does the rest. And no login required.
It seems odd to me to take a federated protocol, centralise it in a proprietary system and then shrug and forget RSS when that goes away.
I was on Akgregator for years, then Bamboo in Firefox, now on QuiteRSS now that Quantum has killed Bamboo. All using the same imported OPML file of feeds.
Re:It's time to head back to RSS?
by electricEmu on Sunday April 01, 2018 @02:39PM
(#16729755)
> Why not just <overly simple thing>
Which self hosted RSS aggregator contains an easy to deploy, backup, and maintain ecosystem (easier than Dokuwiki), an Android and iPhone app, that all work synchronized together...
It's overly complicated to set up and maintain the infrastructure needed for most people. Time costs a lot.
I would say Google Reader's discontinuation actually increased the popularity of RSS. The protocol was big news for a few weeks, and it sparked a lot of new services which made news themselves.
I don't know whether feeds usage was growing but it was not comparable to social media. At that time papers were increasingly adding paywalls and didn't show any signs of embracing feeds any further.